Résumé
- Star Trek: Lower Decks revisits forgotten TNG planets like Ornara and Brekka in second contact missions.
- Angosia III from TNG’s “The Hunted” is a planet left hanging, potentially requiring resolution.
- Lower Decks teases the return of Roga Danar, suggesting a compelling story if Angosia III is revisited.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is set to visit this forgotten planet from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Under the command of Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), the USS Cerritos specializes in second contact missions, continuing the search for planets previously visited by ships like the USS Enterprise-D. In TNG, for example, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew regularly encounter new planets that were never revisited in the series. The idea of Starfleet ships conducting second contact missions makes perfect sense, as Picard occasionally mentioned that the Federation would send representatives after the Enterprise departed.
As a devout follower of the Prime Directive, Captain Picard only intervened if he felt it was absolutely necessary, and he generally left planets in better shape than when he found them. While I enjoyed the episodic nature of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there are several planets introduced over the course of the series that I would have liked to revisit. Star Trek: Lower Decks now has that opportunity, and has already mentioned many planets from Star Trek: The Next Generation (including the infamous Angel One). But there is one planet from TNG that deserves to be revisited, as its fate was left hanging.
In Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3, episode 9, “Reliable Sources,” for example, the Cerritos monitors the planets Ornara and Brekka, whose inhabitants Captain Picard had encountered seventeen years earlier in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, episode 22, “Symbiosis.”
Star Trek Continues to Fix Mistakes Made by Picard’s Enterprise TNG
Part of the USS Cerritos’ mission in Star Trek: Lower Decks is to check out the planets visited by Captain Picard and the Enterprise in TNG.
Star Trek : Lower Decks should revisit Angosia III from TNG’s “The Hunted”
Has Angosia III already joined the Federation?
In Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3 Episode 11, “The Hunted,” Captain Picard and the USS Enterprise-D visit the planet Angosia III, which has applied to join the Federation. Picard meets with the planet’s ruler, Prime Minister Nayrok (James Cromwell), and things seem to be going well until a notorious criminal named Roga Danar (Jeff McCarthy) escapes from a nearby prison. Picard and the Enterprise crew help apprehend the prisoner, but they learn that he is a genetically engineered soldier who was abandoned by his people after the war.
After Danar escapes from prison again, he breaks out some of his fellow prisoners and they storm the capital of Angosia. Nayrok asks Picard to help him stop the insurrection, but Picard says he can’t intervene. Eventually, Picard and his crew leave Angosia as the planet’s leaders and the former soldiers continue to clash. While the episode suggests that Nayrok should negotiate with the prisoners to avoid bloodshed, there’s no indication that this happens. Angosia III is never mentioned again, but I’d like to know what happened to that planet and if they helped these former soldiers reintegrate into their society.
Former soldier Roga Danar was mentioned in Star Trek: Lower Decks
Ensigns Boimler and Mariner discuss Roga Danar.
Although the fate of Angosia III remains unknown, Roga Danar was mentioned in an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. In Lower Decks Season 1, Episode 8, “Veritas,” Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) mentions Danar when Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) asks him who the “greatest badass of all time” is. When Mariner replies that no one has heard of Danar, Boimler insists that everyone knows him because he “totally outsmarted Picard, and he has amazing hair!” While I enjoy it when Lower Decks references obscure characters from previous Star Trek series, Danar is one I would like to know more about.
Much like Star Trek: Prodigy brought back Captain Thadiun Okona (Billy Campbell) from TNG, Lower Decks could do the same for Roga Danar.
I would like the Cerritos to investigate Angosia III and discover that Danar may be in a position of authority on the planet. Not only did Danar escape the Enterprise-D alone, but his history as a soldier would make for a compelling story. “The Hunted” doesn’t reveal much about the war that led the Angosians to create genetically enhanced soldiers or how they plan to help them after Picard’s visit. Unfortunately, Star Trek: Lower Decks’ fifth season will be the show’s last, and if Angosia III doesn’t appear, I hope a future Trek project revisits this planet from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
